I am not a huge follower of our lesser minor league teams. I’m going to be completely honest, it’s difficult enough for me to keep track of the 25-40 guys on our roster, let alone following all our minor affiliates – I leave that work to the guys over at ProBallNW, Prospect Insider, etc. The Rainiers are easy to follow because they’re a direct link between the minors and our guys here in Seattle; Tacoma is where young Mariners come from, and where sick Mariners go to get healthy. But the Everett Aquasox is where baby Mariners come from, and since I will be going up to Everett this year at least twice, these articles-within-an-article are very interesting. It doesn’t sound like the organization is targeting Single A players specifically, but it does look like any promising A’ers might eventually have the opportunity to take advantage of this program. I think it’s brilliant, and it will be interesting going into 2010 knowing that this has been put in place.

I’ve been trying to digest this article by Graham on Lookout Landing about David Aardsma over the past 24 hours or so. Not being a stats person, I spoke briefly via email with ProBallNW’s Conor Dowley regarding groundball rates and why they’re important, so now I have a general grasp of that – I have decided that as long as my understanding of some of these numbers is at least basic, I should be OK in reading more complicated articles -which, for me, is just about every article on both Lookout Landing and USS Mariner. Part of me is scared of the concept of a slightly-less-effective Aardsma (home run-wise), and the other part of me thinks that was part of what made him fun to watch last year – he wasn’t a JJ Putz- or Mariano Rivera-like closer, but he wasn’t terrible, either. And if our offense can get him more of a lead to deal with than just the one or two runs they gave him in 2009, that will keep some of the edge-of-the-couch freak-outs down for me.

Get that Mariners Annual, folks. Obviously it sells itself, but it can’t hurt to push the point, either.

Happy Valentine’s Day to those who celebrate. I will be spending some time today at a friend’s place for Mexican food brunch and bad movies. Cheers!